You can either age gracefully or fight it every step of the way, but however you choose to age, there is one thing that must be done in order to stay above ground the longest.
This one thing can decrease your resting heart rate (placing less stress on your heart), increase the heart’s ability to pump blood, and decrease both blood vessel stiffness and blood pressure.
It can also speed up the “emptying” of your intestines, increase your bone density, increase your muscle size and your strength, improve your metabolism (so you become a better fat-burning machine), and lower your body fat, blood sugar and insulin levels.
In addition, it can decrease your LDL (“bad”) cholesterol levels while increasing your good cholesterol (HDL), improve your quality of sleep and your reflexes, decrease the chances of depression, all while improving your cognitive abilities.
While this fairly impressive list can be managed by roughly one to two-dozen different medications (author’s best guess), it can also be handled by participating in a regular exercise program (science’s best fact).
The research on exercise and its positive effect on the human body as we age is staggering.
Studies such as Baltimore’s Longitudinal Study of Aging confirm this. America’s longest running scientific study on aging started in 1958 to answer the question: What is aging?
You see, once we clearly know what happens to the body physiologically as we age, science can then best address the relationship between disease and age-related changes, as well as make recommendations on how to age well.
What do these scientists recommend? That exercise and physical activity are good for you — period. That is a direct quote from their website. They go on to say that not only can exercise reduce our risk of developing some diseases that occur with age, it can also prove to be an effective treatment if we have disease.
Exercise is our medicine, without the bottle.
You needn’t look too far in this area to find amazing examples of aging well through exercise. In fact, a recent workout at the Fred Gingell stairs is what prompted me to write this column.
While doing my usual workout, I kept getting out run by a man who was clearly older than me. Since I consider myself fairly fit, he was definitely well above “fairly fit.” I finally managed to catch up with him (mind you, it was at the top of the stairs and he was done his workout) and I introduced myself.
Ian Sunderland and his just as equally incredible wife, Sue, are 62 and 61, respectively, and have been exercising in some form or another for over 30 years. In addition to kicking my butt on the stairs, they also weight train, cycle and ski on a regular basis.
Ian explained to me that exercise makes them feel good, and in his opinion, “delays the inevitable.”
Ian couldn’t be closer to the truth.
Two more examples of how moving in your older years can battle age are Point Roberts resident Doreen Peltier and South Delta resident Shirley Caine.
Peltier is 74 years young and participates twice a week in my boot camp class, performing physical feats of excellence using the TRX, kettlebells, dumbbells and her own body weight — and she only began exercising at 62. It’s proof that you can begin at any time in your life.
She also claims she will keep on exercising for as long as she can lace up her runners.
Then there’s the determined Caine, who can plank, press and squat at 79 years young. She saw what exercise could do for older people when she worked at a seniors’ home for 15 years.
They did their own study there, of starting small amounts of exercise with the residents, and found the seniors became stronger and happier because of exercise.
Caine says her goal with fitness is fairly straightforward: She wants to exercise as much as she can as she ages because she knows that if she doesn’t use it, she will lose it.
PJ Wren is a local personal trainer and writer who can be reached at www.fitnesswithpj.com, or www.gofitgals.com.
